A mix of English and Tamil, -
Random thoughts on anything and everything, prosaic and otherwise

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Translation help needed

Tamil pulavars and pandits, please help. Sometime back I learnt Varanam aayiram as a dance. But I am not satisfied with the way it is being depicted. I found this site which gave an approximate translation. But this is not enough for choreo purposes. I need help with certain words. Any help is highly appreciated.

I love this dance. I feel it needs to be fully understood before one can express what it conveys.

vAraNam Ayiram SUzha valam Seiduaccompanied by elephants in a procession

In the first pASuram of "vAraNam Ayiram", gOdai starts describing beautifully to her friend, the divine dream that she just had of her marriage with kaNNan.

"Oh my dear sakhi! I had this wonderful dream; I saw nAraNan (SrI ranganAthan), surrounded by thousands of elephants, going around SrI villiputtUr. My father, periyAzhvAr, and the citizens of the village are ready to extend a grand welcome to Him with pURNa kumbhams placed on their heads. The whole village is decorated with tOraNams (streamers) to mark the festive occasion."

gOdai continues describing the next scene in her dream: "Tomorrow is the day that has been fixed for the wedding; I saw a handsome young youth, who goes by the names narasimhan, mAdhavan & gOvindan, enter the wedding dais, decorated with betel-nut trees, in order to participate in the niScitArtha (finalization of the wedding between bride and groom) ceremony."

B. Additional thoughts from SrI PVP:

nALai vaduvai maNam enRu nAL iTTu: What is the reason why the wedding is tomorrow and not today or 4 days later? SrI PVP's aruLicceyal is that if it is today, gOdai will become too excited with happiness, and like a thirsty person who drinks water very fast and chokes and dies in the process, she cannot hold the excitement. If it is a few days later, it is too long a wait for her, and she cannot stand it either. Hence the day is fixed for tomorrow.

************************Hope this explanation helps you to imagine much more about andal's dream of marrying Narayanan...

Rajesh, thanks for visiting. and thanks for your help. I googled this info, I am more interested in getting down to the individual words mentioned here. I have a general understanding of what is happening. But I guess I am more interested in the tamil used here. Thanks much.

nALai vaduvai maNam enRu nAL iTTuHere, vaduvai manam means the girl's marriage as far as I know i.e., vaduvai is a word to describe a lady/girl.

pALai kamugu pariSuDaip pandaR kIzhHere, PALai and kamugu are types of trees. Now this means, the ppl who received prizes under the trees(meaning the Kings who had those trees as the tree of their country).

ku~nkumam appi kuLir Sandam maTTittuTHey just put it, but they so so, bcoz they keep it in many places - like forehead, near the hair parting in forehead(vagidu). But appi doesn't mean as u say always. It is used for keeping in one place also. The actual word for appi is "Poosi"